In the lore of Soviet spycraft, few figures command as much respect as the "illegals," steel-jawed agents with the intelligence of a chess grandmaster and the fortitude of a cosmonaut.
Painstakingly trained in the KGB's Directorates, the illegals spent years assuming a fake biography, known in Russian as a "legend," then awaited orders undercover for years or even decades.
Unlike their "legal" counterparts, they worked without a diplomatic cover, which would offer them immunity from prosecution. They were rewarded with the kind of adulation Americans reserve for movie stars. This week's jaw-dropping arrest of 11 people seems to offer a glimpse into a recent form of the program.
Russia has made little comment on the specific accusations, though it called the arrests "baseless" and "unseemly." But if prosecutors are correct, two things seem clear: First, that Russia's network of illegals has survived, and perhaps even grown, since the Soviet Union's collapse.
{{/usCountry}}Russia has made little comment on the specific accusations, though it called the arrests "baseless" and "unseemly." But if prosecutors are correct, two things seem clear: First, that Russia's network of illegals has survived, and perhaps even grown, since the Soviet Union's collapse.
{{/usCountry}}And second, that the agents' assignment — collecting information about politics and getting to know policy makers — can now be achieved through more straightforward means.
After the 1917 October Revolution, the Soviets had good reason to develop a specialty in undercover intelligence-gathering. Few countries formally recognised the Soviet Union, so no diplomatic cover was available. It was a simple matter to fabricate a foreign identity — the agency mined records of foreign babies who had died, wrote Galina Fedorova in a 1994 memoir about life as an illegal.